Chicago Tribune 2014 Dining Awards

Photo by Bill Hogan / Chicago Tribune

Curtis Duffy-- Chef of the year You have to be some kind of crazy to open the type of restaurant Curtis Duffy dreamed up. Dream is the operative verb - not taking over a turnkey hotel restaurant space, but plucking from your mind an idea percolating for 20 years and building it out in glass and concrete. It's a costly proposition. The market for ultra-fine dining is so minuscule that most chefs with a basic grasp of supply-demand economics steer clear and opt for more casual approaches (see: Bowles, Izard, Takashi et al). Not Duffy, who gambled to go big over going home and made 2013 the year of Grace. (Cont.)

Curtis Duffy-- Chef of the year You have to be some kind of crazy to open the type of restaurant Curtis Duffy dreamed up. Dream is the operative verb - not taking over a turnkey hotel restaurant space, but plucking from your mind an idea percolating for 20 years and building it out in glass and concrete. It's a costly proposition. The market for ultra-fine dining is so minuscule that most chefs with a basic grasp of supply-demand economics steer clear and opt for more casual approaches (see: Bowles, Izard, Takashi et al). Not Duffy, who gambled to go big over going home and made 2013 the year of Grace. (Cont.) (Photo by Bill Hogan / Chicago Tribune)

Curtis Duffy-- Chef of the year You have to be some kind of crazy to open the type of restaurant Curtis Duffy dreamed up. Dream is the operative verb - not taking over a turnkey hotel restaurant space, but plucking from your mind an idea percolating for 20 years and building it out in glass and concrete. It's a costly proposition. The market for ultra-fine dining is so minuscule that most chefs with a basic grasp of supply-demand economics steer clear and opt for more casual approaches (see: Bowles, Izard, Takashi et al). Not Duffy, who gambled to go big over going home and made 2013 the year of Grace. (Cont.)